Canadians are already footing the bill for Harper’s early election call – as much as a billion dollars – but that’s not all taxpayer’s are on the hook for.

After being suspended without pay in 2013, Conservative appointed Senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau are now back on the public payroll – thanks to Stephen Harper’s early election call.

In a cynical cross-country patronage blitz, last Thursday Conservatives handed out over 108 separate government cheques across the country, totalling over $1.1 billion dollars.

The next morning they started again – in Stephen Harper’s desperate bid to buy votes Conservatives binge promised more than $800 million at over 130 funding announcements across the country on Friday and Saturday.

“After ten years of Stephen Harper, middle-class families are working harder than ever but can’t get ahead. Canadian wages are falling, incomes are stagnant, household debt is skyrocketing and 200,000 more Canadians are out-of-work than before the 2008 recession," said Mulcair. "Clearly Stephen Harper's plan isn't working."

In his opening statement of the election campaign, Mulcair noted that Stephen Harper has the worst job creation record of any Prime Minister since the Second World War.

The most recent Statistics Canada data confirms that the Conservatives have failed to build a balanced economy and that Stephen Harper’s plan just isn’t working – the 1.7% decline in the manufacturing sector is proof of this.

Thanks to a motion by NDP environment critic Megan Leslie (Halifax) and the efforts of concerned stakeholders, plastic microbeads have been banned by the federal government.

“We’ve been saying for a long time that the best way to tackle this pollution problem is prevention,” said Leslie. “It’s about time the Conservatives took concrete action to protect our lakes and rivers from this pollution.”